Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Interventions for Improving Working Environment in Home Care Work in Sweden – Preliminary Findings from the First Year: A Gender Perspective

Östlund, Britt LU ; Holgersson, Charlotte ; Christofer, Rydenfält LU ; Arvidsson, Inger LU ; Johansson, Gerd LU and Persson, Roger LU orcid (2018) 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association, IEA 2018 In Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018) 826. p.269-277
Abstract
Home care services are an important part of the Swedish social welfare system. Considering the size of the sector and the increasing future needs for home care, due to growing elderly populations, it is worrisome that problems in terms of injuries, sick leave and staff turnover appear common in this occupation. A problem for managing the situation is, however, that the current knowledgebase is fragmented and not much developed being characterized by a homogenous workforce in terms of gender, dominated by women. A common perception is that this work is low skilled and something that can be done part time in parallel with household work. To improve the working environment in home care work, we initiated a project in which one of the goals... (More)
Home care services are an important part of the Swedish social welfare system. Considering the size of the sector and the increasing future needs for home care, due to growing elderly populations, it is worrisome that problems in terms of injuries, sick leave and staff turnover appear common in this occupation. A problem for managing the situation is, however, that the current knowledgebase is fragmented and not much developed being characterized by a homogenous workforce in terms of gender, dominated by women. A common perception is that this work is low skilled and something that can be done part time in parallel with household work. To improve the working environment in home care work, we initiated a project in which one of the goals was to create a better overview of published results of interventions and examples from community practice. Accordingly, we undertook a systematic review of the scientific literature with the purpose to find and map practical examples of interventions. The preliminary result suggests that there is a considerable lack of knowledge and often lacking, or poor, analyses of the consequences of the unequal gender balance in home care work. Interventions could be grouped into four types of interventions: scheduling, education and training, organizational change and digitization. Interestingly, it seems as if single problems at the workplace level to a larger extent are covered in the scientific literature while problems on the system level are more seldom addressed. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; ; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
host publication
Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018). IEA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 826. Springer, Cham
series title
Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018)
volume
826
pages
269 - 277
publisher
Springer
conference name
20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association, IEA 2018
conference location
Florence, Italy
conference dates
2018-08-26 - 2018-08-30
external identifiers
  • scopus:85051779285
ISSN
2194-5357
2194-5365
ISBN
978-3-319-96064-7
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-96065-4_30
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
83c871ea-ae22-48cf-a501-c2aee4a98b64
date added to LUP
2018-08-29 09:25:08
date last changed
2024-03-18 13:19:29
@inproceedings{83c871ea-ae22-48cf-a501-c2aee4a98b64,
  abstract     = {{Home care services are an important part of the Swedish social welfare system. Considering the size of the sector and the increasing future needs for home care, due to growing elderly populations, it is worrisome that problems in terms of injuries, sick leave and staff turnover appear common in this occupation. A problem for managing the situation is, however, that the current knowledgebase is fragmented and not much developed being characterized by a homogenous workforce in terms of gender, dominated by women. A common perception is that this work is low skilled and something that can be done part time in parallel with household work. To improve the working environment in home care work, we initiated a project in which one of the goals was to create a better overview of published results of interventions and examples from community practice. Accordingly, we undertook a systematic review of the scientific literature with the purpose to find and map practical examples of interventions. The preliminary result suggests that there is a considerable lack of knowledge and often lacking, or poor, analyses of the consequences of the unequal gender balance in home care work. Interventions could be grouped into four types of interventions: scheduling, education and training, organizational change and digitization. Interestingly, it seems as if single problems at the workplace level to a larger extent are covered in the scientific literature while problems on the system level are more seldom addressed.}},
  author       = {{Östlund, Britt and Holgersson, Charlotte and Christofer, Rydenfält and Arvidsson, Inger and Johansson, Gerd and Persson, Roger}},
  booktitle    = {{Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018). IEA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 826. Springer, Cham}},
  isbn         = {{978-3-319-96064-7}},
  issn         = {{2194-5357}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{08}},
  pages        = {{269--277}},
  publisher    = {{Springer}},
  series       = {{Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018)}},
  title        = {{Interventions for Improving Working Environment in Home Care Work in Sweden – Preliminary Findings from the First Year: A Gender Perspective}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96065-4_30}},
  doi          = {{10.1007/978-3-319-96065-4_30}},
  volume       = {{826}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}